The PC is dead? Long live the PC?

Life in the old dog yet

The casket is ready. The grave is deep. The dirges are sounding. Enemies on every side declare the PC fatally fat and muscle-bound, awaiting what they insist will be its imminent death.

Buzzards hover above the corpse-to-be. Linux enthusiasts claim their altruistic operating system can run for months without crashing and do everything an old-fashioned Windows or Mac machine can do and more - except run a program you really like or send decent output to your printer.

Bandwidth mavens point to a world where all data will reside in some repository at the far end of a wire, from which you'll retrieve it instantly - as soon as you manage to get that fiber-optic cable installed. Wireless-phone promoters paint a similar scenario but advise you to skip the wire - if you can wait several years until they update their systems. And defenders of the average consumer insist that cheap, simple new internet appliances will make the world safe for those who refuse to learn about .ini files - unless they want to do anything more interesting than read text and send email.

A computer in the fridge?

Any day now, say other vultures, the PC will give way to a box that sits on top of your TV. Or a PlayStation. Or a panel on your refrigerator. Or a screen phone clipped to your belt. Or maybe all those things at once, networked to each other and to a mega-server somewhere in the cyber-sphere. Yet for all the claims and predictions, the poor PC continues to fend off the Grim Reaper.

So how come PC sales keep increasing every year?

Flexibility, for starters. Nothing can match the PC's adaptability. Turns out that in a world where devices proliferate, the PC is as useful as a humble peripheral to all of them. What else can serve as a hub for everything from a Palm organiser to a mobile phone to a digital video camera? Until every digital device comes with its own internet address and access to fast connections, the PC's speed and storage remain unbeatable.

And PCs keep getting cheaper and faster. Omit a major component in the interest of price, as Net appliances do by eliminating the hard disk, and usability suffers. The defining elements of a PC - local storage and the ability to run programs offline - turn out to be major assets. That's one reason the Palm, which has both, is so popular. Add an external keyboard, and the Palm becomes even more PC-like.

Omnipresent = omnipotent

Then there's ubiquity: since PCs are everywhere, programmers can depend on them to run creations like Napster and Gnutella. But who's going to expend a lot of effort developing programs for some internet appliance with 623 users? Though much programming creativity has migrated to the Internet, the Web experience on a PC remains superior to what it is on any other platform - because the PC is the platform most sites are designed for. Those who bang on about PC substitutes ignore the power of the PC's installed base of users, programmers, peripherals, and drivers.
Talk is cheap. For years I've been hearing about the imminent arrival of wonderful internet appliances, email devices, Web phones, and the like. The products that actually arrive are far less wonderful. Almost inevitably, they flop in the marketplace when they turn out to be overpriced and overhyped.

The PC desperately needs to be more reliable, easier to use, and more secure. But new devices are not necessarily more reliable or simpler. Slow communications, limited graphics, and serious browsing constraints frequently make the Web experience with a Palm or a wireless phone extremely annoying.
And the PC need not die for the competition to flourish. Let a thousand flowers bloom! Bring on a pocketable unit that combines a Web-connected mobile phone with an organizer and a detachable wireless keyboard! Bring on digital TV and electronic picture frames and e-books!

Smart home- or wearable tech: which is more likely to benefit your digital life this year?

I'm more likely to buy smart home- than wearable tech this yearI'm more likely to buy wearable- than smart home tech this yearI'll probably buy both smart home- and wearable tech this yearI'm unlikely to buy smart home- or wearable tech this yearNot sure/don't know